Featured Sector: Education

Table 1: Education Construction (£ million)

Underlying value of construction projects starting on site. (Excludes individual projects of more than £100 million and framework agreements).

Reductions in government spending have weighed heavily upon this sector, and will continue to do so over the foreseeable future. Education construction benefitted from the New Labour focus on improving schools, as they pumped a large amount of funding into facilities. However, the cancellation of the Building Schools for the Future programme was a big loss, and has deflated the growth seen prior to 2010.

There will be opportunities for work in this sector; we have seen increasing numbers of refurbishment and extension projects as local authorities make do with the existing stock of schools, while universities who are benefitting from an increase in fees could begin to invest more in facilities as they compete for students.

However, we do anticipate that this sector will see one of the largest falls in the underlying value of project starts over this year of any in the construction industry.